"Did the Devil make them do it?"

The Mont Vernon, NH home invasion and murder trial culminated yesterday in a guilty verdict and a life sentence for the ring leader Steven Spader. This crime was committed by four men who were lead by Spader, a then almost 18 year old with seemingly no conscience or even the slightest trace of a soul. This unimaginable crime shocked, saddened, angered and completely confounded an entire state. As more and more frightening and disturbing details about the crime came to light it became apparent that there were as Judge Anderson stated during sentencing: "No mitigating factors." This crime was not a crime of passion nor the result of alcohol or drugs but more frighteningly the result of pure, unadulterated human malice. The randomness, the "depravity" and the sheer evil with which this mother and daughter were attacked leaves one possibly unanswerable question...WHY?? No, I am wrong, the "why" seemed to have been established: Simply put it was a thrill killing. So then, I am left only to ask HOW??? How does someone of barely eighteen become so evil?? What possesses or drives a person to such madness? I haven't enough question marks to express how incredulous I am about how someone who's barely lived would want to kill and go on to do so without remorse.

Regrettably this is not the first time that I have found myself asking this question. After the Columbine High School shootings I wondered how it could happen that a person could be driven to hate so much as to plot the deaths of their classmates and then carry out the plot again seemingly without remorse? However, even in that case the argument could be made that there were indeed mitigating factors which contributed to Klebold's and Harris's desire to commit murder at their school. Aside from the speculations about media influences, there were the more logical theories about bullying and that perhaps these two outcasts had been tortured to such an extent by their peers that they felt that their only recourse was to take matters into their own hands? Though not justifiable, there is at least a half way logical explanation there for how an already unstable person could be driven to the brink and then pushed over by the wrong set of circumstances.

In the case of the Cates family there are no such circumstances as they were the random victims of Spader's malicious gang. Therefore, I am left shaking my head, scratching for some semblance of sense that I could attempt to make out of this completely senseless crime. It is always a shock to hear of a vicious crime that was committed by children or young adults because the thought seems to be that a child or teenager hasn't had time to become bitter or jaded. They haven't been exposed to the evils of the world and therefore they lack the motivation to commit evil themselves. But clearly, there are exemptions to this rule. Some children or young adults need little encouragement to be evil. It is sad fact of life that there are some who are capable of the unthinkable with or without the experiences one could blame for driving a person over the edge. What else could we blame for the horrible things that some people have done? Is there something wrong with the idea that we are shocked and horrified when such a crime is committed by a child but if it is adult who is the perpetrator we somehow accept it as a natural result of society's failings? Obviously we cannot accept these terrible crimes not matter who is responsible but when the assailant is a teenager, it is only then that we search for answers. I am guilty of this same selective outrage as I am writing this post I am completely without answers as to what drove Spader to kill and to kill without remorse? But, ultimately I cannot blame his childhood or the fact that he was adopted I cannot blame Twinkies or High Fructose Corn Syrup. I cannot look to the TV the radio or Marilyn Manson. I cannot place undue blame on the video game: "Grand Theft Auto" ( No matter how much I would like to...) I cannot put the responsibility on the NRA (they didn't use guns) I didn't hear a mention of any modern learning disabilities such as ADHD but if I did I could not hold Spader's teachers accountable either. No, in this crime there is no one to blame but Spader and his accomplices for the evil and depravity that they visited upon their victims. But, in the absence of any real answers we are left to try and rationalize the irrational. We blame their parents their upbringing the media their diets and their lack of religious teachings. In this desperate search for an explanation what gets lost is the the fact that all of these possible explanations removes responsibility for the crime from the perpetrator. I am just as guilty of inadvertently misplacing blame while trying understand what cannot be understood. But it is important to remember what is to be gained from a deeper knowledge of the criminal mind: Prevention. The ultimate goal of any criminologist is to try to get inside the criminal mind and hopefully repair it before they do any more harm. I do not believe that there is anything to be gained by removing blame or excusing behaviors because of a misguided desire to learn what makes a criminal tick. Still with that being said because in the case of the Mont Vernon murders I lack any real knowledge of the evils at work I feel that all that I can do is ask: Did the devil make them do it???